Though Band of Horses aren't likely to be heralded as trailblazers, they do sound quietly innovative and genuinely refreshing over the course of these 10 sweeping, heart-on-sleeve anthems.

The weakest of the three versions of Nothing Has Changed is the chronologically sequenced 2xCD version. It's basically just a slight revision of Best of Bowie, compressed to throw in five later songs....The 3xCD Nothing Has Changed, though, is the jewel among the three variations on the same core material. Its masterstroke is that its 59 tracks appear in reverse chronological order.

The record will remain, something that channels the past but sounds like little else right now, an album about rediscovery that's situated in the constantly-shifting present.

A handy 4xCD compilation (disc four a fascinating set of outtakes and unreleased material) that captures the good Captain’s cagey albeit failed move towards mainstream rock acceptance.

Ruins has a vivid sense of place.

Vernon himself sings with more texture and conviction than ever before. He’s shifted fully from vessel to commander, steering the music instead of seeping into it.

Abstract, yet brutally honest, Burma shame the transparent, insecure and phony, reminding us that ideals can be standards.

Released today, it instead feels like a staggering transformation and a return to form that was never lost, an ideal adaptation by a group that many people didn't know they needed to hear again.

You don’t need to be an expert in Cave’s wider cosmology to be swept inside of Ghosteen, to be devastated by its despair and lifted higher by its humanity. You only need the ability to suffer and the desire to survive.

Regardless of what kind of audience it ultimately finds, though, In Ghost Colours earns its smiles with a combination of ingenuity and easiness that you don't often come by, and for that, even in April, it already feels like a triumph.

If Knock Knock is a more conventional album than the more psychedelic and twisted Amygdala, it’s also a more affecting one. The fact that some of the guests appear more than once (Murphy gets two turns, as does Sophia Kennedy, the vocalist who released her strong debut album on Pampa last year) lends cohesion, and the production is extra lush.

The band's least ornate batch of songs to date builds upon Longstreth's most direct and identifiable lyrics ever. Which means that Dirty Projectors have upped their emotional and structural accessibility all at once.

The duo taps into a power greater than itself to address impossibly vast and elemental topics-- friendship, lust, revenge, art, self-actualization-- with songs every bit as big.

Whereas her last album's smoothed-out eclecticism could be both daunting and empty, The Reminder is equally diverse yet more full-blooded.

Summertime '06 is breathtakingly focused, a marathon that feels like a sprint.

It’s alarming how many of the issues cited by artists and presenters persist today—police violence, systemic racism, poverty, cultural erasure—yet that makes the music sound fresh, lively, relevant in its celebration and commiseration. Both the film and the soundtrack bear that weight of history gracefully and jubilantly.

Like Ghostface's modern classic, this album defies hip-hop's current atmosphere of youthful cockiness and aging complacency: instead, it's driven by the sometimes celebratory, sometimes traumatized sense of stubborn survival and perseverance, a veteran mindset that can no longer picture success without having to defend it.

This all-star team of Northern European electro-house producers infuses the record with often low, rumbling bass, twitchy synths, and an oddly high-altitude light-headedness-- like floating, high on oxygen, just above a dancefloor.

Minnesota Miracle is your time-machine ticket to experience the band at peak ferocity; from the moment Hart unloads the carpet-bombing backbeat of New Day Rising’s mantric opening track, the legend of Hüsker Dü starts to feel a lot more real. .... The piecemeal nature of More Miracles makes it less an all-consuming, sensory-obliterating experience than the Minnesota Miracle disc, with some selections bearing the hiss of a bootleg cassette. But we do get to hear a lot more audience reaction and interaction.

Every sound is lovingly recorded and given a cradle of space.

The music carves out a space that always leaves plenty of room for the music’s most important component, the one that, in this artistic sphere, ultimately determines what it all means: the listener.

It is one of the most exciting and passionately composed albums to appear not only in the global bass tradition but in the pop and experimental spheres this year.

Herbert has outdone himself when it comes to his usual conceptual three-ring circus. But, crucially, this time he's put all that theoretical effort into his most memorable songs.

It might seem counterintuitive to call Chemistry a grower: From the first listen, it's both pummeling and riveting.

Across Endure, Special Interest embellish the cornerstones they established on 2018’s Spiralling and 2020’s The Passion Of with gestures that wouldn’t sound out of place on ’90s radio.

I Got Heaven moves with an intuitive grace that makes it feel stadium-sized without losing its nuance or its grounding in the scene that birthed it. It’s easy to love, and it knows it.

Armed with more ideas than should probably be legal, Architecture in Helsinki can't be bothered to dwell for too long on any one of them, and it's this fickle nature that will make you either adore them or deplore them.

Some of these songs are as lovely as any Lenker has ever written: lush and verdant, chords fanning out like ferns, their major-key tonalities at odds with the heartbreak at the album’s core.. ... A collage of these recordings comprises instrumentals’ two songs, “music for indigo” and “mostly chimes,” which together run more than 37 minutes. They are not showy pieces, but the depth of her relationship with her instrument is clear.

He is, to put it bluntly, one of those people who gets it right far more often and in more different ways than your ordinary person really should. Uproot is another one of those instances.

As Hartzman’s lyrics delve deeper into a rich, suburban mundanity, her bandmates respond with their most dramatic and explosive performances.

Next to Fountain Baby’s splashy bombast, Amaarae’s embrace of tension and restraint is both audacious and inspired.

There’s plenty to unpack here, as there is with all of Jaar’s work, but if you wanted to simplify things you could call 2012 - 2017 his house album, in that Jaar imposes upon himself the conventions and requirements of traditional house music.

There’s so much to hear and ponder on the generous Volume 2; even if it leaves you wanting more, that absence of deeper secrets is crucial to the set’s humanizing effect. At last, Volume 2 shows the work behind the beginning of Joni Mitchell’s masterworks, at times so seemingly effortless even her collaborators wondered if it existed.

On Let England Shake, Harvey is not often upfront or forceful; her lyrics, though, are as disturbing as ever.

Knowing that this is Dre's finale, there's a pleasant melancholy that frames Compton, and with the music in our ears, acknowledging that maybe that's for the best.

FKA twigs is not a masterful lyricist, at least not yet; some of her couplets feel clunky, like she's grasping in the dark for rhymes and coming up with the objects closest to hand ("If the flame gets blown out and you shine/ I will know that you cannot be mine"). But when she zeroes in on the essence of a thing, she hits hard.

Confield promises elegant production, accessibility in moderation, and one of the most enveloping, thought-provoking listening experiences to come forth from leftfield this year.

Her mind is alive and humming, and her language leaps out at you with its hunger.

The one slight drag of Sundial: In contrast to Noname constantly barring out, her hooks sound a little weak, as on “Hold Me Down,” where her plain melodies are backed by the type of full-throated choir that sounded better on Chance’s Coloring Book. The features, however, are explosive.

Bejar's essential complexity ultimately feels human.

Bring any baggage you want to this record, and it still returns nothing but warm, airy, low-gimmick pop, peppy, clever, and yes, unpretentious--four guys who listened to some Afro-pop records, picked up a few nice ideas, and then set about making one of the most refreshing and replayable indie records in recent years.

The project is distinctly rough around the edges, to great effect; there’s the sound of dust popping off vinyl and cassette hiss throughout. ... His uncle and father are gone, but Earl is still here, carrying on their artistic legacy--and, with the help of his collaborators, building his own.

Beyoncé seized the powers of a medium characterized by its short attention span to force the world to pay attention. Leave it to the posterchild of convention to brush convention aside and leave both sides feeling victorious.

They’ve made the first record of their career that feels like it might teach you something over time. It is rare, and special, for a band to be this effortlessly and completely themselves.

Freetown resonates with everyone sagging under the weight of systemic oppression.

For a record fixated on personal nostalgia, Life Is Full of Possibilities still feels bright-eyed and forward-thinking.

The test of any conceptual record is how well it stands on its own, removed from the angle. And A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure is a first-rate work, even if you're unfamiliar with the backstory.

How the West Was Won serves up their muscle, sweaty heart and golden grandeur in an exhaustingly persuasive light. That, and a hundred of the best riffs you've ever heard.

Ranging from the tightly wound “Brown Earth” to the sprawling “Christmas in My Soul,” it is the album of hers I would recommend to newcomers. The surrounding records are also strong.

In a concise package, you get a fuller portrait of one of Springsteen’s greatest and most mysterious albums—and to this day, the one he’s proudest of—as well as candid insight into his creative process.

The ark-like box should provide serious leisure-time satisfaction for both longtime Floyd freaks and aspiring heads alike.

These sublime ensemble recordings reflect not just the result but the process of deep enlightenment. Coltrane, performing with ashram members, illuminates Hindu devotionals with meditative Indian instrumentation, a sparkling Oberheim OB-8 synthesizer, droning Wurlitzer lines, and full-bodied singing evoking the Detroit church choirs of her youth.

Its stylized, specific, and unflinching sound roars with a singular menace, at once terrifying and captivating.

The title of this album is a challenge as well, as How to Dress Well’s modern masterpiece is conducted with the most eternal transparency--Krell asks “what is this heart” and lets you look right into his own.

Her lyrics have the conviction of someone like Fiona Apple: a profoundly individual presence that centers, above all, on self-reliance, on searing autonomy, on the act of becoming. My Woman does this more vividly and lucidly and daringly than before.

Mostly, though, the Young we get here resembles the Young we already know: the one who we first met on his rootsy-yet-metaphysical 1972 breakout album, Harvest, then again later on Comes a Time, in 1978. ... When all is said and done, we’re left wanting more.

Temporal displacement and imagistic writing make Here in the Pitch feel vaporous at first, but it soon becomes its own transfixing language, a magnet that makes your internal compass go haywire.

Cosmogramma is an intricate, challenging record that fuses his loves-- jazz, hip-hop, videogame sounds, IDM-- into something unique. It's an album in the truest sense.

The campy flair, smirking irony, and deliberately "retrolicious" alliteration matches the scarecrow-genius of his new album, Pom Pom.

Despite its density (they fit worlds into just nine songs), the album remains exciting and accessible, albeit highly sobering.

It sounds quite good, another weird and sloppy record from a guy who released a lot of them. And hearing it again with all the fantastic music that surrounded it, music that further cements Dylan’s Bootleg Series as one of the most important archival projects in modern pop history, it remains a beguiling artifact.

Behind this happy clash of stylistic preferences is a subtly but surely revivified Malkmus, confident to experiment more deliberately than ever.

The Blueprint is possibly the least sonically inventive hip-hop chart topper in years-- stunning and captivating for sure, but still loungily comfortable enough to sleep to.

It’s a playful, fantastical response to some serious life changes.

The album is like a discovery of a new mutation of still-recognizable DNA. And finally this new strain of sound isn’t just bold for Low; it’s just plain bold.

Parallax feels like a more complete work than any other Atlas Sound record, with the differences between the songs less distinct and everything flowing together more naturally.

But for now, basking in Pink's riptide, Wata, Takeshi, and Atsuo are 2006's balls-out riff-makers to beat.

Plunge is riskier than anything she has made before. It is sometimes harsh, often dissonant, frequently audacious.

It’s the impossible sweep and grandeur of the music that tells the real story, of how a rush of sound can take us somewhere we can’t explain.

Excavation gains power from gathering a little dust for a while, becoming a dark treat to occasionally sink into.

An expanded version of the Truckers’ The Dirty South that finally reveals the true breadth of their 2004 masterpiece.

Once again, though, Baldi is simply unwilling or unable to stop writing hook-filled songs, rendering Here and Nowhere Else even more tense and thrillingly conflicted than its predecessor.

He doesn't reveal many new tricks, but his knowledge of his own palette is masterful in every moment. More poetic and thoughtful than ever before, Jaar maintains an ability to fit seemingly disparate sounds together as if they were always meant to find each other.

If Blood Mountain, their brilliantly upsized and unrelenting third album, doesn't confirm their position as the greatest big-time metal crew on earth, I demand a state-by-state recount.

Her writing is as richly fetid as ever—replete with bar brawls, murder-suicides, Afrin addictions, and serial killers—but a bright red yarn of heartbreak wends its way between these songs, little cuts coming together to form one gaping wound.

Though they certainly do their fair share of sampling, they tend to use fragments as a means of fleshing out the battling, overdriven guitars, triumphant trumpet lines, and drum assaults that seem to break through walls with the barreling force of a thousand Kool-Aid men.

The Drexciya reissue rightly returns the spotlight to the original electro's signature rhythms and analog palette.

Each note and phrase on the album is colored to depict this struggle. The instrumentation is bracing, almost as if played live for a crowd, but it has the intimate tenor and tone of Saba recording the entire thing alone in his basement.

It's not just a collection of hits; it's an album, one that gives the project's familiar nocturnal foreboding a new sense of grandeur.

Cam's flow is a thing of beauty.

Syro contains some of his most tactile music; it’s a headphone record par excellence, an hour-long feast for the ears.

Where Singles the movie was a romantic comedy with Seattle rock as its backdrop, its soundtrack, for anyone outside of the Pacific Northwest or the college radio universe, was a revelation. The 25th-anniversary reissue of the compilation revisits and further contextualizes this moment, with a bonus disc of demos, live versions, and other film ephemera never before issued on CD or vinyl.

SOS is a clear document of how extensively SZA has sharpened her songwriting since the exquisite CTRL, how she’s become an even more exacting lyricist and imaginative musician. While placing herself firmly in the tradition of R&B, she’s forcefully blasé about genre tropes.

Lie Down may be Oldham's most country record of new songs in years, and it's also one of his most accessible and least academic records.

Crack-Up contains his most compelling writing to date because it’s so damn relatable in 2017--reacting and retreating inwards as people and institutions fail to meet the standards set in one’s head.

Catharsis is Stickles' fuel, and The Monitor is a 65-minute endorsement of angst and opposition as the best way to present that combustible sorrow.

The sequencing shapes the album beautifully, creating a sense of emotional fatigue while only hinting vaguely at redemption. Thematically, however, that cycle implies a romantic fatalism, as though every relationship is doomed to end painfully. That’s what makes Gentlemen at 21 such a compelling and necessary reissue, even if the album has never been terribly hard to find.

For those who may think four CDs and three DVDs are too much, consider this: for an album that is all about contradictions, excess and mess, more of everything is most certainly a good thing.

Though the songs themselves are wonderful, that's the powerful source Powers taps into here: if you feel like the dark center of the universe or simply need a little space, Wondrous Bughouse obliges.

Roots and Crowns is bluesy and soulful without reverting to revivalist schtick, and experimental without relying on blind cut-and-pasting.

It's the headphones album of the year from a producer with a long history who has come into his own.

The album sounds ridiculously heavy, with many songs-- including the gurgling "I'm Slowly Turning Into You" and the Dusty Springfield cover "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself"-- easily trumping their studio counterparts.

The combination of the music's essentials-- jackhammer riffs clipped from punk and metal, mid-tempo beats from hip-hop and electro, and supremely catchy sing-song melodies-- is striking on its own, sounding remarkably fresh and unlike anything else right now. But an even greater source of the record's appeal is how it doesn't sound especially referential.

A Seat at the Table, her third full-length album, is the work of a woman who’s truly grown into herself, and discovered within a clear, exhilarating statement of self and community that’s as robust in its quieter moments as it is in its funkier ones.

Her music never sounds alone. The record glows with this strange self-sufficiency, an instinct to push forward against bad odds.

Less concerned with outside forces than internal balance, Golden Hour stands as an assured, artful snapshot of a particular rush of feelings, but its wisdom speaks volumes to Musgraves’ ongoing evolution.

The Cutting Edge is music of the present, but not the '60s present, an eternal present; the songs are about observation and they exist in a place where it's always now, in sound and word.

Death Grips appeals to the knuckle-dragging troglodyte and the smirking smart kid in us: thick-headed goonery and bookish, viscera-free nerdiness, making beautifully misanthropic music together.